


in the absence of light

by ThanksForListening



Series: bedside manner [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Post-Promised Day, im here now with my favorite niche topic: emotional convos after traumatic events, no one make fun of me for being so late to this show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:15:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28511754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThanksForListening/pseuds/ThanksForListening
Summary: "The dark made everything feel unfinished. He knew the battle had ended, knew the real work would start as soon as everyone was able to stand, but for now, sitting in a hospital bed the day after the end of the world, all Mustang felt was a restlessness he couldn’t quite place.It didn’t make sense. Hawkeye had come in and out of surgery already, was resting beside him in the room he’d demanded they share. There were soldiers still in recovery, but everyone he knew, everyone he’d worried about, would be fine. The rest of his group would require only time and patience to heal, so he wasn’t sure why he still felt like he needed to keep his guard up."or, Mustang and Hawkeye talk after the events of the Promised Day.
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye & Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Series: bedside manner [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2088576
Comments: 4
Kudos: 47





	in the absence of light

**Author's Note:**

> hello im so many years late but i just watched this show for the first time and I couldn't get this idea out of my head. idiots who don't admit/realize they're in love mixed with emotional angst and fluff is the shit i live and die for so u know i couldn't pass this shit up.

The dark made everything feel unfinished. He knew the battle had ended, knew the real work would start as soon as everyone was able to stand, but for now, sitting in a hospital bed the day after the end of the world, all Mustang felt was a restlessness he couldn’t quite place. 

It didn’t make sense. Hawkeye had come in and out of surgery already, was resting beside him in the room he’d demanded they share. There were soldiers still in recovery, but everyone he knew, everyone he’d worried about, would be fine. The rest of his group would require only time and patience to heal, so he wasn’t sure why he still felt like he needed to keep his guard up. 

Maybe it had something to do with what he saw. With nothing new to replace it, the images he was greeted with when he opened his eyes mirrored the ones he saw when he’d tried to sleep: Hawkeye lying on the ground, sinking in a pool of her own blood. Edward screaming in agony as something indescribable opened him up and swallowed him whole. The never ending light he’d found at the other end of the transmutation circle, the shadowed being staring at him like he meant absolutely nothing. 

He remembered it’s voice. It didn’t give him much attention, ignored his questions and desperation. “You’ve seen horror from the perspective of the perpetrator,” it told him. “You seek a balance that can never be reached. Your mind is teeming with visions you pray can replace the ones you long to forget.”

“I don’t understand,” was all he’d managed to say. 

It didn’t have a face, but he swore the thing smirked at him. “You’ve made it too easy for me. You always do.” 

The darkness came soon after. It wasn’t until he felt the ground underneath him and the hands on his shoulder that he knew he’d returned, and that he’d left something irreplaceable behind. 

“You’re supposed to be resting, Sir.” He could hear the sleep in her words, shifted his head in the direction of her voice. 

“I haven’t so much as moved in the last hour, Lieutenant.”

The springs under her bed groaned, and he imagined she was easing herself up. Part of him wanted to tell her not to move, that her wounds were still fragile and her lost blood only recently replenished, but he had already grown tired of the incessant hovering of his nurses and other staff. He imagined she wouldn’t take too kindly to getting the same treatment from him. 

“I can hear you thinking from here, Sir. Your mind needs rest, too.”

The smile crept up without his permission. She’d found her way through his defenses, snuck in when he wasn’t looking. He’d spent so much time hiding, but she saw everything, heard each unspoken word and thought that ran through his head. He hadn’t meant to get used to it, but the damage was done, and despite what he told himself and the rest of the world, he knew that the selfish part of him never wanted to let her go. 

“There’s a lot of work to be done, is all.”

“You’ve never been able to lie to me, Colonel. I don’t imagine now would be a good time to try and start.” She waited a moment, before asking, “Does it have to do with your sight? The doctor said you may feel disoriented while you adjust.”

He shook his head. As she spoke, he tried to picture the look she was giving him. When would all traces of sleep disappear? Would she stare at him with pity now that she knew he couldn’t see it? He cycled through faces like pages of a book, searching desperately for one to replace what he kept coming back to. 

“Is it—“ she hesitated, before asking, “is it something you saw during the…”

“When they forced me through the portal?” Her silence confirmed the words she hadn’t said. “No. Not exactly.”

He could hear the uncertainty in her silence, the mental debate over whether to voice the question he knew she had. He wasn’t sure why, but part of him wanted her to. Talking about the things that mattered wasn’t usually a behavior he engaged in willingly, but this...something about it was different. 

Maybe it was him. Maybe he was different. 

“You can ask me about it,” he told her after the silence began to linger. “If you’d like.”

She didn’t wait very long after getting his permission. “What did you see?”

Mustang searched for the words. “I remember that it felt like falling. Or, it would have, if there’d been any sort of direction. The universe seemed to unravel all around me, which was unnerving, for the most part.”

“For the most part?”

“There was a moment, right before I landed onto something like a surface, where I felt like everything made sense. Like something inside of me clicked. I knew if I managed to stay there, to spend more time in that feeling, that I’d know the answers to all my problems. I’d know everything.”

“But you didn’t stay there,” Hawkey guessed. 

Mustang nodded. “As soon as I felt it, it came crashing down, and I crashed along with it. There was...there was a door. It towered over me, and there were carvings all along it that I couldn’t quite make out. Everything felt important, but the door…there was something different about that. Something powerful.”

“Do you remember what it looked like?”

He shook his head. “I tried to memorize what I saw, but It found me first.”

“It?” She sounded so young when she asked. An old but new face flashed in front of him, the girl he’d met when he was just a boy himself. He didn’t see her as often as he liked. In his quiet moments, he often wondered if he was to blame for that.

“There was this being. Everything but the door was white, including it, but it somehow cast a shadow. Or perhaps it was nothing more than a shadow. It introduced itself with many names, but the one that stuck out was Truth. It was the person they wanted me to see. The reason they sent me in there.”

“Is it the thing that took away your sight?”

“Yes.”

“Even though you weren’t the one who chose to do the transmutation?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” For a moment, he was glad she’d never tried her hand at alchemy; if she had, he knew she’d commit the taboo just to lecture the being about fairness and justice. The thought almost brought a smile to his lips. 

“I’m not sure. It didn’t give me much of a chance to speak my case.”

“How could something called Truth not see the lies of the transmutation? Why would it take something from you when you didn’t do the unforgivable act?”

The conversation played through his mind, reminded him that he was already guilty enough for punishment before he ever got pushed through that portal. Maybe it was shame, or cowardice, or maybe he wanted to protect her from the fact that their efforts, however valiant, would never make up for their actions. Whatever the reason, he decided to keep that bit to himself. 

“I suppose,” he said instead, “that intention has nothing to do with it. I went through. I saw what I saw. And for that, I had to pay a price.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment; when she did, her voice had dropped to almost a whisper. “I’m sorry. I should have stopped them.”

He shook his head. “There was nothing you could do.”

“It doesn’t matter. I was supposed to protect you, and I failed.”

“You did nothing of the sort.” God, he longed to look into her eyes, to find the moment when she began to believe him. He didn’t care about seeing the world, would have given his sight up willingly if he could have kept her. Her voice could remain steady but her eyes would betray her, would have shown him exactly what she felt, and now...now all he could do was hope his words would be enough.

“I shouldn’t have let them capture me in the first place. If I hadn’t been injured, maybe—maybe I—“

“Lieutenant.” He tried to drown his sentences in emotion, to go against his own nature because she had to know, she had to hear the sincerity he wasn’t sure he could show her. “You have saved my life more times than I could ever repay you for. If anyone here should spend their time lamenting about failing, it should be me.”

“Colonel—“

“They nearly killed you, Hawkeye. Only because they knew that you—that I—“ he took a breath. “That your death would be the only thing that could have made me do something as unforgivable as that.”

Neither of them said anything for a moment. He found that confessions fell off his lips with ease when he didn’t have to look them in the eye. He didn’t want to know what that said about him. 

She spoke first, her voice soft but stable. “I never got a chance to thank you for listening to me. When I told you not to do human transmutation.”

“I almost didn’t.”

“I know. But I’m glad you did. Even though they—even though it happened anyway, I’m glad you didn’t choose it.”

He thought about the moment. The stain on her neck had spread so quickly, the blood dying her white blouse faster than he thought should be possible. It was then, when they’d thrown her in front of him and asked him to choose, that he finally understood why the Elric Brothers had done it. The entire world was at stake, and yet for a moment he’d wondered what good any world was without her. 

Had she not begged him, her voice faint but her purpose clear, he wasn’t sure they would have needed to force him into it. In that moment, when he watched the life drain out of her, he might have done anything to bring her back. The lines she’d stopped him from crossing had faded as quickly as the color in her skin, and he knew any strength he’d had was nothing more than an appearance for her sake. 

If he was braver, he would have reached for her; instead, he whispered, “I’m glad you followed orders. If you hadn’t walked out of there…”

“I had to, Sir.” He could hear the smile now, and when she spoke, he swore he could see it. “You wouldn’t make it a day without me.”

He wasn’t sure when they were allowed to laugh again, when the devastation and the trauma of their fight would fade enough for something like humor to make another appearance. He did it anyway, let the sound fill the room around them, let it hide their wounds for a moment, take them back to a time when laughter was all it took to make everything okay. 

“Starting tomorrow, we’ve got a lot of work to get done.”

“Yes, Sir. I haven’t forgotten our purpose.”

“Until then,” he told her, “do you think you could do me a favor?”

“Anything.”

He put his head back down on the pillow beneath him, closed his eyes out of habit. “Will you tell me what Alphonse looked like again?”

As he laid there, she described the way Al’s thin frame drowned in the coat Mustang threw their way. How his blonde hair reached long past his shoulders. How his eyes held both exhaustion and wonderment in them. She told him that he never stopped smiling, not once since the moment his body materialized in front of them. He looked a little like Ed, she mentioned, but every sharp edge of the eldest brother was rounded out, and Al towered over him by at least a few inches. 

Even though she’d told him before, had commented on his appearance the moment he’d come back, Mustang still laughed at the last detail. With every word, he began to build a picture, not just of Alphonse but of all of them: Ed standing next to his brother, his crew bursting through the hospital doors, and Hawkeye, sitting beside him, smiling as she told him every detail. He knew then, that no matter what happened to him, whatever the cost he paid for creating the world he’d once envisioned, it would be worth it, so long as they could see it.

**Author's Note:**

> i have at least one more fic similar to this featuring different characters that's almost done and another that i kinda planned out but haven't written yet so there'll be at least 2 stories in this series if not 3. 
> 
> kudos and comments make me literally so happy. i have a horrible habit of never responding to comments on here but if u hit me up on tumblr @thanks--for--listening i will maybe definitely respond lol


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